As the LPGA takes a two-week break before the resumption of the 2013 schedule in Asia, let us tip our cap to a trio of LPGA players who have decided to step away from the game at various levels for numerous reasons.
- Helen Alfredsson played her last LPGA event last week at The Evian Championship. Alfredsson was on the LPGA for 22 seasons, with eight victories and more than $5.6 million in earnings. She noted that age 48, the rigors of travel had become too much and she aims to study sports psychology. She will also spend more time on a charity tournament in her home country of Sweden that supports Alzheimer’s, a disease that took her mother.
- Sophie Gustafson has stepped away from the LPGA to return to her native Europe and will play on the Ladies European Tour. Gustafson, 39, from Sweden, won six times and earned more than $6 million in her LPGA career and was a frequent member of the European Solheim Cup team.
- Amanda Blumenherst, 26, will play the remainder of this season and then take some time off to be closer to her husband, Nate Freiman, a rookie first baseman for the Oakland A’s. The two met in college at Duke, where Amanda was an All-American golfer and won the 2008 U.S. Women’s Amateur and Nate played baseball for the Blue Devils. They were married late last year and have been apart much of that time because of the frequent, conflicting travel schedules on the LPGA and in Major League Baseball. Amanda recorded six career top-10 finishes.